Coal Industry Hands Out Pink Slips While Green Collar Jobs Take Off

Washington, D.C.-A transition to renewable energy sources promises
significant global job gains at a time when the coal industry has been
hemorrhaging jobs for years, according to the latest Vital Signs Updatereleased by the Worldwatch Institute.

The coal, oil,
and natural gas industries require steadily fewer jobs as high-cost production
equipment takes the place of human capital. Many hundreds of thousands of coal
mining jobs have been shed in China, the United
States, Germany, the United
Kingdom, and South Africa during the last two
decades, sometimes in the face of expanding production. In the United
States alone, coal industry employment has
fallen by half in the last 20 years, despite a one-third increase in
production.

Strong government
support has allowed Germany,
Spain, and Denmark
to emerge as leaders in renewable energy development-and green jobs. The German
government reports that the country was home to an estimated 259,000 direct and
indirect jobs in the renewables sector in 2006. This figure is expected to reach
400,000-500,000 by 2020, and 710,000 by 2030. In the United
States, the renewables sector employed close to
200,000 people directly and 246,000 indirectly in 2006, due mostly to leadership
at the state level. China is rapidly catching up in
manufacturing of solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines and is already the
dominant global force in solar hot water development.

An estimated 2.3
million people worldwide currently work either directly in renewables or
indirectly in supplier industries. The solar thermal industry employs at least
624,000 people, the wind power industry 300,000, and the solar PV industry
170,000. More than 1 million people work in the biomass and biofuels sector,
while small-scale hydropower employs 39,000 individuals and geothermal employs
25,000.

These figures are
expected to swell substantially as private investment and government support for
alternative energy sources grow. The most optimistic analyses project that
global wind power employment will increase to as much as 2.1 million in 2030 and
2.8 million in 2050. Similar projections estimate that worldwide solar PV
production alone could create as many as 6.3 million jobs by
2030.

"Government
officials now have yet another reason to put the full weight of their support
behind renewables," said Renner. "In addition to protecting our planet and
phasing out an increasingly limited resource, policies that support renewable
energy also support job creation."